MTN and RIM Make a Bold Statement with New BlackBerry Smartphone

Johannesburg, South Africa and Waterloo, ON - MTN (JSE: MTN) and Research In Motion (RIM) (Nasdaq: RIMM; TSX: RIM) have announced that the BlackBerry® Bold™ smartphone is now available from MTN dealers in South Africa.

The BlackBerry Bold supports tri-band HSDPA high-speed networks around the world and comes with integrated GPS and Wi-Fi®, as well as a rich set of communications and multimedia capabilities.

The powerful communications and multimedia features, stunning display, sophisticated user interface and newly designed full-QWERTY keyboard will make the BlackBerry Bold a ‘must have’ for both business professionals and power users in South Africa.

“The BlackBerry Bold exudes style and accomplishment with its glossy black exterior and satin chrome frame. Its stunning display, sophisticated user interface and newly designed full-QWERTY keyboard all combine to make it a phone that any power user would be proud to carry,” says Pieter Verkade - MTN SA Chief Marketing Officer.

“The new BlackBerry Bold is a big step forward for business-grade smartphones. It wraps incredible speed, power and functionality together in a beautiful and confident design,” says Mark Guibert, Vice President of Corporate Marketing, RIM.

BlackBerry Bold smartphone features include:

* Dimensions: 114 x 66 x 15 mm. Approximate weight (including removable battery) 136 g.
* Elegant design with chic, glossy finish.
* HVGA (480x320 resolution at 217 ppi) colour LCD presents stunning image quality.
* Newly designed precision keyboard allows fast and accurate typing.
* Support for tri-band HSDPA and enterprise-grade Wi-Fi (802.11 a/b/g) networks, together with its next-generation 624 MHz mobile processor, makes short work of downloading email attachments, streaming video and rendering web pages.
* Integrated GPS, together with improved rendering capabilities and faster download speeds, supports location-based applications and services.
* Includes 128 MB Flash memory plus 1 GB on-board storage memory, as well as a microSD/SDHC memory card slot for up to 16GB of additional storage that is conveniently accessible from a side door.
* Newly enhanced, high performance browser and high-resolution, ultra-bright display give users an on-the-go web browsing experience with desktop-style depiction. The trackball mimics a mouse, making it easy to navigate sites in “Page View” or “Column View” or to point-and-click in order to zoom in on specific parts of a web page; different emulation settings allow users to choose between desktop-style HTML content or the mobile version of web pages. Attachments can also now be downloaded from within the browser and there is support for watching streaming videos (RTSP – real-time streaming protocol).
* Microsoft® Word, Excel or PowerPoint files can be edited directly on the handset using the preloaded DataViz® Documents to Go® suite.
* 2 megapixel camera with video recording capability, built-in flash and digital zoom.
* Numerous premium phone features including Speaker Independent Voice Recognition (SIVR) for Voice Activated Dialing (VAD), Bluetooth® 2.0, with support for hands-free headsets, stereo headsets, car kits (including car kits that adhere to the Bluetooth Remote SIM Access Profile) and other Bluetooth peripherals.
* For managing music and video, the BlackBerry® Desktop Manager software includes Roxio® Media Manager for BlackBerry® as well as Roxio Photosuite® 9 LE, which makes it easy to enhance pictures and create photo albums on the computer. For users that manage their collection with iTunes®, the new BlackBerry® Media Sync application provides a simple way to sync iTunes digital music collections with the smartphone*. Support for High Speed USB 2.0 allows files to be transferred quickly from a computer to the BlackBerry Bold smartphone.
* BlackBerry® Internet Service support that allows access to up to 10 supported personal and corporate email accounts, including most popular ISP email accounts.
* BlackBerry® Enterprise Server support for enterprise deployments, providing advanced security and IT management in IBM® Lotus® Domino®, Microsoft® Exchange, and Novell® GroupWise® environments.

The BlackBerry Bold is available now from MTN dealers across South Africa. MTN subscribers can enjoy unlimited email and web browsing when using the BlackBerry Internet Service on the new MTN AnyTime packages from as little as R60 per month.